How to do Current Reservation Booking in IRCTC

Ever heard of Current Reservation booking in Indian Railways ? If yes, then that option is now available online via IRCTC website. Read along.

For those who don’t know what is Current Reservation Booking, it is an option provided by Indian Railways if you are On-boarding from the station of Train’s Origin, then you may book the ticket in reservation, 1-2 hours before the train starts. For e.g. if you are travelling from Mumbai to Ahmedabad and a train leaves from Mumbai BCT at 9 PM, you may login to IRCTC at 7PM and see in Sleeper (SL) coach if the Current Reservation window is open. If so, you may book it. You will get a confirmed Sleeper coach. This option is available with AC coaches as well. You can only book this option if you are boarding from the station where the train starts.

I have booked the seat using this option from the next halt as well, but that was in Mumbai itself. So you may try your luck.

Below the snapshot that shows Current Booking Available for 10th Feb 2016, from Ahmedabad. You can see the time of booking is 9:46 PM.

For AC coaches as well :

As you can see the Train 12668 starts at 11:45 PM.

So now that you know that there is an option to reserve a seat for yourself, if you have missed the Tatkal and you have an urgent travel requirement, try the Current Reservation. Thank me later once you are successful in booking. For now, I see that this option is not being explored by many hence the tickets don’t get filled like in Tatkal, so you have the leverage. Have a great time travelling and great time booking. Share it with your loved ones and friends.

Edit 1 :

I just booked in current reservation at 10:05 PM for a train that starts tomorrow at 5:10 AM

If is a long distance train running for more than 1 day, then yes there are chances that chart is prepared twice. If your boarding station falls in the zone of second main station for charting, then you may be able to book it.

You will have to check for a previous day train, that will be reaching Adoni on the present day and check before 6 hours of arrival to Adoni. Keep checking every 10 minutes, you may be lucky

But actually, I have seen that Current Reservation is also available for the Non-Origin station of the train. For example, I’ve tried to book SL ticket from Kurnool to Chennai for the train which is having starting point Nagarsol and destination is Chennai. It means, it is allowing current reservation for not only train Origin stations.

Yes Manoj, there are chances for long distance multiple day running trains that chart is prepared for more than once, usually on the next on the major station in the route.

Current reservation will be available online for the stations where the chart is prepared before the train starts it’s journey or enroute at a major station. It’s not a sure situation, depending on the cancellation and the number of seats available the chart preparation takes place.

It’s a bit luck and a lot of probability matrix.

To see if there is any possibility of current reservation from the station you are going to board, check for the current reservation option for the train a week ahead so you will know the pattern.

Current booking status is available once the chart is prepared. If there are any available seats for some destinations then current booking is enabled. Usually you can do the current booking reservation from the window at the railway station.

In irctc you will have be very watchful about the current booking Availability –

For any train starting before 8am, chart is prepared on the day before, so you will have keep a watch on those train a day before and keep on checking for the availability.

It is available under the same tab as general reservation marked now as curr_available.

For train starting during the day you need to keep checking the availability anytime between 4 hours to 2 hours.

Also current availability is subject to the number of cancellation right before the chart prepare or after that. So not every train will have current reservation on all days.

You just have to look for alternatives.

Check for the current availability trend of the train you are going to travel few days before.(4hours before departure)